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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24123403">when I fall</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/darundik/pseuds/darundik'>darundik</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Capitalism, Family Issues, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Science, the author had too much fun wildly projecting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:49:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,541</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24123403</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/darundik/pseuds/darundik</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Essek had too much on his mind to pay attention to his own feelings. That soft smile wasn’t helping.<br/>(Modern AU with an overworked and unemotional management consultant Essek Thelyss realizing there’s more important things in life than status and prestige with the help of a cozy and wiser physics PhD student Caleb Widogast).<br/>[COMPLETED]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>106</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>250</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Shadowgast Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Are you following?” Essek snapped behind him. His colleagues thawed from whatever giggle fest stopped them on their tracks to the sports bar they were headed to. Essek opened the door to them with an intent glare and hunched shoulders, and they rushed through without another glance. The bar immediately opened everyone up: shed coats, gloves, hats, unfortunate necessities for a particularly paralyzing D.C. winter. No White Christmas, no magical New Year’s snow, so they begin the calendar year with grey skies and fierce winds, hoping for springtime cherry blossoms, or at least some proper wintry flurries. The senior partners haven’t returned from Telluride yet, in these few days after the holidays where time and accountability felt fake, so the associates left the office for a happy hour at one of the empty bars down the block. The group from across the cubes already had drinks and spread out between a couple tables next to the large windows. They were all earnestly watching the congressional hearing on the flatscreen above the warm wooden bar. </p><p>Essek stopped by some guy he rotated with when they first entered the company and dropped his dark wool coat in the high-top seat. “What’s the game for tonight?”</p><p>Lythir didn’t move his eyes from the screen, only sipping on his IPA-looking beer for a beat before answering, “Drink every time the client’s mentioned. If they go down, might as well go down with them.”</p><p>Immediately Essek flagged down the barkeep for a stout and returned to the table. It was crowded with their corner of the office, those without families to come home to and not enough vacation time to afford staying home for longer during the prolonged holiday season. The usual cliques always form at the happy hour, finally relaxed faces close to each other with attentive eyes and relieved smiles. Some silver tinsel still hung from the corner of the TV. The edge of his sweater caught some leftover confetti from the New Year’s party days before. Essek flipped it out and sipped his obnoxiously cold stout for a warm bar for a cold night and continued to look over the rim. Eventually the boring, balding senator stumbled the client’s name again, and the group yelled out a groan of recognition, facing away from their conversational partners to clink their glasses together at the center of the table, and take a sip of their drinks. With an extraneous shout, Lythir gosled Essek’s grip and some of the stout spilled on his hand as he brought it back down to the table. </p><p>As he wiped down the sticky alcohol, Essek noticed that a portion of the table didn’t react to the rest of the group’s huzzah. One of the experienced partners — Yussa? Maybe Essek saw him at a coffee chat once — seems to have finally actually accepted the associates’ perpetual happy hour invitation, his wrinkled face and weary energy betraying his outsider presence. He was speaking to someone who absolutely wasn’t invited to the happy hour. The crowd of tense, alert, performative early professionals broke down next to the much calmer, settled energy around Yussa’s conversational partner. In a sea of professional blacks and greys, the warm maroon of the man’s sweater, the soft blue of his scarf, and the long dull copper hair popped. He wasn’t looking up at the TV, but intensely at Yussa, speaking in a low warm voice, posture loose and shoulders complacent in comfort. Essek felt his own want to relax, seeing his ease, but a bark of laughter next to Lythir tensed his spine again. The quiet presence of this stranger felt like an unnatural stillness on a rippling pond - he’s not trying to prove anything, he’s not trying to perform, he’s just talking? Out of the shoulder-slung messenger bag a pink nose peeked out — is that a cat in the bar—-?</p><p>The crosstalk bubbled over again in another loud table-wide groan as the bumbling senator on the screen further nailed their project into a coffin and by the time Essek turned to the center of the table, the last clinks were finishing up. Suddenly the barking laughter, squeals of glee, and theatrics of the professional performatism forced him to take another gulp of the dark beer to hide his expression. Everyone was always trying to crosstalk each other, arms literally taking up space in the conversation, drawing attention to how much more charming, more hilarious, more perfect, more respectable, more admirable they are, all at once. He can usually perform well enough at these things. He learned to play beer pong for things like this. The girl across the table slammed her hand on the table in an over-excited intentional conclusion to her asinine story about her interfering new roommate and remembers to chuckle in time. The frat guy next to her reared his head back in laughter and then promptly checked his phone in the conversational lull that followed.</p><p>Essek leaned into Lythir again. “Who’s the guy with Yussa?”</p><p>Lythir’s eyes were still on the screen. “His mentee? Must be a recent immigration thing. I dunno.”</p><p>Essek took another look over at the newcomer over his drink, knowing Lythir definitely wasn’t looking and everyone was too interested in their own egotistical performance of camaraderie and cool to notice. The down-to-Earth slouch and alertness, along with Lythir, confirmed the newcomer’s European roots. The two girls between them checked their phones, finished their drinks, and went around to get their coats and hug some goodbyes to their coworkers. </p><p>A dark-haired one patted the definitely-not-Bain guy on the sweater and drawled, “Good luck with those lasers, hah.” He raised his nearly-finished drink and smiled at them. </p><p>“Thank you,” he replied, soft and breathy — and German? — and completely sincere.</p><p>On his other side, Yussa also checked his phone and stood up to leave. “Caleb, it’s always a pleasure, but my partner’s asking for me, and traffic just died down.” His gaze hardened as he looked outside. “It just started snowing… You better not bike across the river.” He looked down at German-guy-Caleb.</p><p>“The lasers need me alive, I know,” Caleb replied. </p><p>“Good lad,” Yussa said, putting on his coat and scarf. Caleb pushed away his drink and started gathering his scruffy scarf around his neck. Essek lived a couple blocks away and only wanted to accompany this man to Virginia and couldn’t think of a single reason to, except to leave this bar. He had already hit his limit of being a social person who gets invited to things, like post-work happy hours.</p><p>Caleb was beginning to stand up as Essek felt the beer in his veins jumping at the moment that he might just miss. “What sort of research do you do?” He heard himself asking, and as much of a surprise it was to him, Caleb turned around with a similar surprise in his winter blue eyes. Essek felt his breath hitch, and it wasn’t from the wind blowing through the open door of the girls leaving the bar. </p><p>“The intersection of astrophysics and quantum physics,” the man with the soft accent said, looking down to scratch at the cat head obviously asking for affection from the messenger bag. </p><p>“Oh, Heisenburg’s uncertainty principle and all that?” Essek replied.</p><p>“Yes, and even further.” Caleb responded, looking up under dark lashes. </p><p>Yussa waved a goodbye, eyes quickly darting over Essek, and left, leaving an open seat space between them. Essek turned in his seat, away from still-staring Lythir, and, loosening his tie, leaned into this fascinating new addition to the banal happy hour. </p><p>“That’s actually very interesting — I consider myself a fan of the field. What does your current hypothesis entail, uh —-“ he asked, waving his hand in a visible question.</p><p>“Caleb Widogast.”</p><p>“Ah, Essek Thelyss, nice to meet you,” came the rehearsed line and practiced handshake, and Caleb glanced down before accepting the reaching hand. </p><p>He took the cat out of the bag onto his lap and started petting it clandestinely under the bar, and explained his academic career of constant questioning, from the commonplace elevator pitch to the more specific and jargon-filled abstract, after Essek’s insistent and confident prodding. From Germany to Georgetown, Caleb arrived, all the while analyzing at how the quantum level interferes with the accepted research on astronomical phenomena. Yussa was a compatriot in nationality, a welcome-to-DC mentor of sorts connected by professors at Georgetown, and the timing of their weekly drink and the happy hour fortunately coincided. The background din of colleague groaning and celebration faded into pleasant white noise as they spoke. Essek felt the beer’s confidence and wakefulness pumping behind his eyes as he watched Caleb, the researcher, the proper academic, squint and state off into the distance, searching for a word, before coming back and staring intently into Essek’s eyes as his hands formed the trajectory of the electrons he dedicated his life’s work to. It was a great feeling, to have those parts of Essek’s brain he forgot about slowly creak off their cobwebs and rust and begin to think like a researcher, an academic, again. Caleb spoke in a well-paced low voice, and Essek leaned in to hear these complex theories better. His degree came in handy for Excel and modeling private sector hypothesis, but he had forgotten how brilliant it was to use those skills not for cash flow projections and profit and loss statements, but for understanding the fundamental building blocks and dramatic theater of the universe inside and around them.</p><p>By the time the last few coworkers finished watching the hearing and downing their drinks, Essek had scooted to the closer seat and the russet tabby cat — Frumpkin, a docile darling— openly dozed on the bar under Caleb’s hand, hair perfectly complementing each other. One of the leaving coworkers clapped Essek hard on the shoulder — “See ya tomorrow” — and Essek glanced behind him to see that his fiancée-d group of coworkers all left for their loved ones for the evening by the time the congressional hearing ended, leaving him and Caleb alone at the table. By the time Essek turned back, Caleb had also finished his drink, gulping it down fully and loudly, and sending the glass back to the barkeep with a charismatic flourish of his wide hands. He looked at Essek with those bright and alert eyes, nodded in the direction of the flurries at the door, and scooped up a dazed Frumpkin with a mrow into his brown messenger bag. </p><p>“It’s a proper snow out there —“ Essek begins.</p><p>“And it’s a lovely ride, compared to back home,” Caleb continued putting on his cozy knitted green hat, and Essek followed him out the door, forgetting his stout and darting on his slick wool coat. “I’d love to continue the conversation, but student’s papers are awaiting some grading.” He walked over to the only bike in the usually full DC bike rack. “May I have your number? I can send you some Vysoren’s paper, it really influenced my perspective.”</p><p>Essek fumbled for his phone and quickly handed it over. “I haven’t thought in physics for so long — I’m so rusty.”</p><p>Caleb unlocked the bike from the rack and entered his number into Essek’s phone. Essek sent back the text with his name. </p><p>“Rusty or not, her theories will blow your mind. They definitely changed my mind on the transformative patterns in star substances.” He settled the messenger bag, cat and all, into the bike basket, and pets the little mrow from the outside. </p><p>Essek shivered in the flurry and glanced at the low dark grey sky. “Will you change your mind about the ride back?” </p><p>Caleb looked up to smile at him from the bike lock, and Essek shivered again. “I’m committed to the struggle, hah. Thank you for the company, Essek.” </p><p>“Nice to meet you as well, Caleb,” Essek nodded as he stepped away on his short walk back home, and waved off Caleb as he hopped onto his bike and began on his long journey home across the Potomac. Essek stood outside the bar, hugging his coat closer to him with his shoulders, the alcohol content of the beer still coursing warm, the recent memory of blue eyes piercing cold, and the realization spreading throughout him that he’s completely fucked for this sweater-swearing, Hozier-looking, cat-cafe, Bavarian-accent new motherfucker in his life.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much to Saffron for beta-ing!! This work is better for you in it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Essek walked home and immediately opened up his laptop to a new browser tab. He has months ahead; the first outlined Georgetown application essay can wait. He takes another look at his phone to see his new acquaintance’s full name; Caleb Widogast, with his empty chat box, had an even emptier personal Facebook presence. Well, Facebook isn’t everything. Caleb’s alma mater Georgetown featured a presentation he did at a San Diego conference on their Twitter feed. Apparently a couple of years into his Ph.D., a doctoral student recently transferred from a German university with an unpronounceable long name. His name was listed 2nd and 3rd in publication acknowledgments in multiple languages; Google Scholar couldn't translate most of those. His Georgetown students confidently declared he was the best TA on forums. </p><p>Essek took a sip of wine from his stemless glass. There’s a person behind these papers; there’s gotta be something back on Facebook. He dove into tagged photos, trying to find the fellow he met at the bar in the blurry presence at the backs of group shots, tagged by friends, all from a little under a year ago, all in English. A grinning woman hugging a sheepish Caleb at an airport, a flour-covered baker passing him a cupcake at a fundraiser, a photo of Caleb giving a presentation in a near-empty lecture hall. The caption on that one was full of hearts and “We’re so proud of you, Cay Cay!!” In every photo, Caleb ducked with the tell-tale slouch of a tall person aware of how much taller they are from everyone else, an intentional softening, a thoughtful approachability made fierce with his intent eyes. Essek remembered how that gaze solidly landed on him with full apt perceptive attention. </p><p>His phone dinged a couple of times and he dutifully ripped his attention from one screen to the other. Verin had texted him about the MFA Gala and how they should coordinate with their dates (hah), maybe a couple of days at the family house on the Cape? Essek brow furrowed for an exhaled reply, “Maybe, I’ll have to check my plans” (even more, hah). Thinking of Verin meant thinking of family, and family meant thinking of those unfinished application essays, tabs, tours, webinars, firm reimbursement forms, and the light and energetic wave he had surfed on since the happy hour suddenly crashed over him, drawing all breath from his chest with a familiar carried weight. </p><p>He blinked at the screen a few times, and then checked the next message. “Vysoren’s paper,” followed by a Sci-hub link, “Hope you enjoy!” A single text from Caleb and suddenly the heavy wave of family rippled out to a solemn pond. He held onto this solid serenity. </p><p>“Thank you, I’ll let you know what I think of it. Would you like to discuss it at next week’s happy hour? Same time, same place?”</p><p>In a few seconds, he received the reply, “Sounds good to me, see you there.”</p><p>A slow flow warmth radiated from Essek’s veins; beer, wine, and an overheating computer. The rest of the glass can wait.</p><p>———-</p><p>Essek saw Caleb and Yussa gathering their coats to leave the usual happy hour bar just as his group of loud and brisk associates entered. Caleb smiled wider as he and Essek made eye contact across the room and waved him over to Yussa’s newly-empty seat. Waving his colleagues goodbye (and good riddance), Essek immediately dove into his analysis of Vysoren’s paper, only ordering a drink after noticing that Caleb did. </p><p>“That’s the one thing I don’t understand--- how can we just throw away this concept that has served to explain so much, as though it had never existed?” Essek leaned further into Caleb’s space.</p><p>“No, no, no, no, that’s the thing about the cat!” Caleb laughed at Essek’s frustration, hands smoothing down the sides of Frumpkin’s furry face as the cat looked up at him. Frumpkin was alarmingly adorable and content in this simultaneously rowdy and refined environment, loafing on Caleb’s lap and staring at the humans around like he knows a secret. </p><p>“It’s exactly like the bad joke -- Schrödinger is driving along when he is pulled over by a policeman. The officer looks the car over and asks Schrödinger if he has anything in the boot. Schrödinger replies, ‘Ja, a cat.’ The policeman opens the boot and yells, ‘Hey! This cat is dead!’<br/>
And Schrödinger says, ‘Well, he is now.’ The joke was that we couldn’t understand the quantum state by projecting classical theory onto it -- we couldn’t see whether the cat was alive or dead. Now, because we actually understand how to look into the box, how to check if the cat is ok, and this cat is very much ok, we can see how the theories of the quantum level actually give rise to classical physics. They don’t reject each other as much as we, and I say ‘we,’ I mean academics way better than me, believed they did, back when the field first began, danke schoen, Einstein -- they actually rise from one to the other.” Frumpkin nosed his way into Caleb’s gesticulating palm, and Caleb looked down once more to pet his cat.</p><p>Essek can’t help but be charmed by the two, or maybe it’s the glass of red. “And Frumpkin, right --? Is definitely alive. And somehow through new ways of seeing the state of this cat, we can see how this cat builds upon the gravity of the planet, if speaking metaphorically, a la Schrödinger here. Am I understanding you correctly?” </p><p>“Honestly, better than most. Most can’t let go of the cat.” Frumpkin was now nosing his way into Caleb’s beer, sniffing down the edge of the bar.</p><p>“Who’s, Schrödinger’s or yours?” Charmed, simply charmed.</p><p>“That’s a question I don’t know the answer to. Would you know, Frumpkin?” The cat sniffed all the way to Essek’s glass, to Essek’s coat sleeve, eventually stepping one light paw onto his knee. An alarmed shiver froze Essek; he tensed his seated position so that the cat had a solid place to step, from his knee to his thigh, reaching from Caleb’s smushing hands to Essek’s petrified lap. The cat followed its inquisitive nose into Essek’s hand, which was softly wrapped around the stemless wine glass. The nose was moist and cold, with little puffs of air in constant sniffing, and as Frumpkin’s head dove under Essek’s palm, he realized he now had a lapful and handful of warm, breathing, very much alive creature that was currently starting to purr, as if it was also surprised at what its found. Essek was too surprised by its sudden move of curiosity and contentment to even comment. </p><p>“He likes you.” Caleb smiled at him very warmly, and some of Essek’s surprise-petrified tension melted away.</p><p>“This cat is certainly alive, hah,” Essek couldn’t help but give out a breathy chuckle, cautiously petting the friendly, warm, living creature. Schrödinger’s cat may be under question, but Widogast’s cat had a beating heart and shedding fur and an inquisitive friendliness just like his owner, and when Caleb reached over to scratch him between his pointed triangle ears, Essek felt like he had learned something new.</p><p>-----</p><p>They started hanging out, texts relaying curiosities and news, snide academic jokes that no one without the hours pored over JSTOR pdfs and late-night whiteboards could possibly understand. A couple of times when Essek saw Caleb leaving their usual place right before the Bain group went in, they chose to leave together, Essek showing Caleb the dreary sights from the high and gray downtown to the cold and desolate waterfront, the conversation eagerly moving from the atoms of creation to the reality of the city around them. Slowly, Essek passed his local knowledge to Caleb, and it finally felt like putting down roots in a city full of transplants. By then, he had forgotten there was a happy hour. Essek was just there hanging out with his friend.</p><p>When their usual time was usurped by rescheduled TA office hours, Essek managed the distance to Georgetown to meet Caleb outside his designated lecture hall. After a couple of minutes of boredom, standing in the middle of a deserted cement hallway, not updated since the ‘50’s and transferring its dreariness to its inhabitants, Essek bit his curiosity and glanced into the room from which Caleb had texted him. </p><p>The auditorium spread in front of him, olive greens and spilled grays and brick browns, with scattered students crowding the first front row seats, as if gravitating towards the center of energy in this room. Caleb stood at the board, connecting two unintelligible figures (something about gravity, it must be gravity) with a chalk line without a squeak. Like the intrinsic arc of motion, Caleb carried his explanation with his whole body, and with that long frame and concentrated intensity, it was hard to look away. A student asked a question and Essek quickly sat in the back and unlocked his phone, trying to see where they could talk afterward, not sure if he wanted Caleb to see him in the lecture hall or not. Annoyingly, banner notifications of work emails kept interfering, and he looked up to just avoid sinking into his obligations. Caleb’s red hair and low, excited voice drew his attention again.</p><p>How wonderful did it feel, to ignore responsibility and necessity, for a little bit. He had left the world of this type of dreary lecture hall and elevated concepts, so long ago, and being back didn’t bring back memories, but rather a dizzying and breath-taking feeling of home and possibility, all at once. Just sitting in one place, listening, forgetting that dreadful buzz of expectation, and feeling his sense of the universe expand from his bones, beyond his mind, and into that space where the highest concepts of the mind reside, all to the sound of Caleb’s voice. </p><p>-------------------</p><p>Over the next week a negotiation takes place over text messages. Essek has first-hand experience in showcasing information before a large crowd; despite his experience, Caleb felt he needed a professional’s advice on his next department lecture. That’s how Essek found himself knocking at the door of the most typical Arlington group house, looking like the most typical Arlington group house. Five tangled bikes jumped from the bike station to the side, four different sets of chairs plopped on the porch, the numbers of the house customized with temporary bright stickers: a proud and Renaissance-looking “9.” </p><p>A familiar ginger face opened the door: “Hallo, come on it.”</p><p>Essek greeted him and gingerly stepped over the threshold into the utter chaos inside. Carefully taking off his shoes, he realized that the one reliable grey Toyota in the driveway was probably the only show of private property in this space occupied by trinkets and mismatching personal effects of a beloved and lived-in communal space.</p><p>Caleb led him further into the chaos, but Essek couldn’t help but stare at everything around the walls and rooms: printed party photographs (of the residents?), mushrooms growing under specialty lights, diplomas pinned under thumbtacks, cat toys and colorful pillows covering a frumpy couch, doodles and paintings and brushes and paint splattered on adjacent tables, official documents poking out from underneath a yoga mat, and doors, doors, doors. This house filled so much more than its outside.</p><p>“We don’t have much time before they all come home, and it’ll get, ah, pretty loud,” Caleb gestured from a blank door.  The painterly chaos from outside turned to the most disorganized library, with textbooks, smaller fiction books, notes, pencils, graphs, print-outs, folders stuffed with graded homework assignments. A line of different cultures’ cat figurines lined his obviously Goodwill wooden desk. Essek carefully wandered through the stacks of books and careful clumps of papers: there was an obvious attention towards their placement, and he provided the same attention in keeping them intact. Caleb gestured to the only chair in the room while he hopped onto the twin size bed, jostling a sleeping Frumpkin, and took out his laptop. There was nothing on the walls, and so many books not in bookshelves.</p><p>“Is that the newest Phillip Ball?” Essek held up one of the books on the table.</p><p>“Ja, and his simplification of complex theories absolutely does not disappoint,” Caleb chose a file and made a face as he showed Essek his visibly very rough Powerpoint, “But this absolutely will.”</p><p>Essek felt his line of vision condense towards this new problem. “And the issue is?”</p><p>“I know the information, I know I can tell it, but I need to make sure that they understand why I made the experiment decisions I made.”</p><p>“An issue of storytelling, then --- could you then run me through what you want this presentation to be?”</p><p>Their discussion continued into the evening, through the pale sunlight dropping across the pale wall and their scrunched faces, a line spoken, another picked up, a weave of endless conversation and pointers and revelations, where the conclusion didn’t even need to be spoken out loud, in something like a spiraling ping pong battle, through the setting sun and straining eyes and Caleb turning on the old-fashioned yellow tone desk lamp. Just as Essek directed him to move the last bit of Powerpoint reformatting, a loud bang from the inside of the house shattered the flow of their Rube-Goldberg machine conversation. A loud female voice screeched: “CAAAy-leb, we’re hOOOOOome!!!” A lower grunt. “Pretty much all of us.” And the voices continued their laughing pitter-patter beyond the door, jostling kitchen implements, slamming doors, throwing shoes across the hall.</p><p>Shoulders around his ears, Essek glanced over at Caleb. “And this is the usual… soundscape of your house?”</p><p>“It’s surprisingly good background noise for studying,” Caleb smiled and got up from the bed. “I think Caduceus is making dinner. I’d love for you to join.” He opened the door with an inviting smile, Frumpkin pushing past his legs with a loud mrow, and with that sort of request, how could Essek say no?</p><p>The small table in the living room (dining room? There’s one room and it’s for everything) already held a large pan full of steaming red curry with tofu and a couple bottles of wine. A curly-haired burly woman in a baker’s apron came into the room holding a ziggurat of frosting-covered cinnamon rolls, and her face visibly brightened upon seeing a guest. </p><p>“Oh my god!! Caleb’s friend is here!!” she exclaimed over her that delicious stand of unnecessary carbs (now that’s the screeching voice), and quickly switched her hold to bring Essek into the even-more-chaotic kitchen. The baker, introducing herself with powerful enthusiasm as Jester, quickly went around the energetic bodies in the kitchen. The tall hippie-looking fellow (even taller than Caleb) waving a soapy hand while washing the pan was Caduceus, he apparently cooked tonight, and the solid man next to him in the park ranger uniform picking out utensils graciously tipped his hat, introducing himself as Fjord in a sprawling and warm Southern accent. A young woman in a frumpled and severe dark pantsuit, FBI badge still dangling from her belt loop, searched for a bottle opener in the messy drawers of the fluorescent kitchen. Once she found it, she looked at Essek with eyebrows up, like she wanted to throw it at him. He instinctively tensed in readiness. </p><p>“Ever open up Georgian wine?” she gruffed in a low voice. </p><p>“No, but I gladly can.” Challenge, accepted.</p><p>“Hell yeah, let’s get some good alcohol,” she handed it to him and then continued shaking his hand. “Beauregard. Now, I need a drink.”</p><p>None of their plates matched, none of the utensils or chairs or couch pillows. The wine flowed freely from Essek’s well-trained hands, suddenly part of this dinner as active participants. Caduceus gave pointers on which home-made cheese and which home-grown mushrooms to pair with the wine, Fjord throwing in a bit about mushrooms growing in the ranger station hallway, Jester elaborating on mushroom picking as a kid and the stories she could make about the faeries living in the mushrooms, Beau all the while trying to decipher the label on the wine and then passing it to Jester to attempt to read. Caleb sat in slumped comfort, deadpan snarking to undercut Fjord’s elaborate misunderstanding with one of the overgrown park bushes, sometimes brushing Frumpkin away from the table without even looking. Beau pointedly asked Essek about his mushroom experiences, of which he had none, and proceeded.</p><p>“Done other drugs?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Trespassed?”</p><p>“No?”</p><p>“Stole.”</p><p>“I can see your badge, and no.”</p><p>She smirked at him from across the table and extended her empty glass. “Good answer. Now pour me some more celebration. I’m back and done with Peru” </p><p>Jester slammed her hands on the table under where Essek was pouring Beauregard another glass from a new bottle: “It’s his first time!! Don’t interrogate on the first time! Shhhhhhhh--- Essek, don’t worry, just eat a roll.” </p><p>While his hands were full with out-of-order dessert and wine, Frumpkin’s inquisitive head appeared under Essek’s arm and quickly snagged a piece of tofu. Caleb swore under his breath and began to stand up--- </p><p>“Come on, let him have his bit of humanity for the night,” Caduceus drawled, and Caleb visibly untensed and sank lower into his chair, letting his legs unfold under the table. </p><p>It was so nice though, so simple, so unassuming, so friendly, so nice. Empty plates, full stomachs, a delightful swirl of sincere jiving around in the air between these new and now familiar strangers. Half of DC this age lived like this, communal and connected. Perhaps, in his comfort, Essek leaned back too far in his chair, because soon Frumpkin landed in his lap. Essek sank his fingers into Frumpkin’s fur; he knew people lived like this, but he never knew it would be so…. Warm. Frumpkin started onto his chest and further across his shoulders, purring furiously, and Essek shivered.</p><p>In his self-satisfied haze, Essek barely heard someone mention Cards Against Humanity, someone else respond how they’re “sooooo 2014,” and realized that that was his cue.</p><p>“Sincerely, this was absolutely fantastic. Some of the best homemade dinner I’ve ever had and some of the best wine -- but I gotta go.” He stood up to a dissonant chorus of no’s.</p><p>Caleb stood up too. “Let me walk you out.”</p><p>Essek gathered his plate and glass for the kitchen, plopping them in the sink, and leaned on the counter to order a ride.</p><p>Caleb put his dishes in the sink. “Thank you for your help, I wouldn’t have been able to make my point so clearly.”</p><p>“The lessons of too many presentations, my friend. I’ll be there for yours.”</p><p>Essek looked up from his phone at Caleb, still standing in that particular tall-person slouch. He looked at Essek, then drew his gaze down to Essek’s shoulders. </p><p>“Frumpkin got to you bad, you’re covered in hair,” he said in a low tone, and drew closer. </p><p>He began brushing his hands down Essek’s shoulders, and he can’t help but shiver and stand up a bit straighter. Caleb’s hands intently roved from his shoulders down his arms, returning with more intent and brushing at the indent of his elbows. Slowly, they returned to his shoulders, going down to Essek’s back, encompassing Essek within, leaving his body with an intent stroke. Caleb kept his eyes lowered, on Essek’s black collared shirt and following his own movements, ever the meticulous scientist. Essek shivered again, from the warmth, from the wine, from the want.</p><p>His hands settled on Essek’s arms with a solid weight, a heavy blanketing comfort. His gaze returned to Essek’s in a slow arc, and came to a rest, holding his attention, and holding him.</p><p>The phone dinged in Essek’s hands; Caleb’s dropped to his sides. </p><p>“See you soon,” he said.</p><p>“See you too,” said Essek.</p><p>As he stepped into the car from the nighttime chill, he noticed the buds on the cherry blossom trees begin to bloom.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Only took me 2 months. Enjoy, y'all. I’d love to hear, and would love to chat at my Twitter/tumblr @caltracat.</p><p>Take care of yourselves, your loved ones, your communities.<br/>The pandemic isn't over and nor is racism. Wear a mask and give when you can.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Interlude</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Meanwhile, a snippet from Caleb I couldn’t get myself to delete.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The knock on Caleb’s bedroom door spurned him from his grading. Beau unceremoniously entered and dropped a manila folder on his students’ sheets. </p><p>“Your boyfriend is the fakest motherfucker in the DMV, and this is a census-designated area of the supremest fakest fuckers in these United States of America.” Her glare moved from the folder to him.</p><p>Caleb looked at her, holding the bitten pen between his teeth. “What do you want me to do with this?” </p><p>“Read it. I’m on the Nexus case and Bain pops up all over. It’s smeared with consultant bullshit. He’s one of their folks working on it. I’m not sure when the investigation will port over to them, but … you should know. He’s definitely more than he seems.” </p><p>She crossed her arms like trying to prove her authority. It worked. Caleb picked up the folder and started flipping through it. Invoices, emails, grids of Powerpoint presentations. This was Essek’s language, the language that Beau so quickly picked up, but it felt like coming to the States again, staring at restaurant menus, and slowly internalizing the realization that he no longer knows which way is north.</p><p>Flipping through, Caleb began speaking with deliberation. “Essek…. Is more than he seems. He is intelligent, he is nice, he listens, he asks questions that others don’t.” He decidedly looked back at Beau. Her solid gaze solidified further.</p><p>“He’s a snake,” she spit out, and then unfurled her arms and leaned in, “Be careful, Caleb. And read it, if you can.” She paused at the door, and then shut it behind her. </p><p>Caleb leaned back in his inflexible IKEA chair and gazed at his desk, Essek’s case covering his work. He did ask, at one of their many bartop discussions, what exactly he had worked on, and Essek had only smiled, said “under NDA,” and resumed sipping his wine. Of course Caleb’s work was more interesting, naturally, but just like Essek’s relentless questions about his research, his students, academic life, Caleb had his own. Why hide his obvious disdain for his coworkers? Where did he learn to perform so well? Why does it feel like the only time he smiles is when he sits down with Caleb? And why does Caleb can’t wait to see him again?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Also note, Beau has absolute legitimate reason to be concerned, please don’t rag on her, I love my girl.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>To my betas, Saffron &amp; Catherine, y’all get it. Cheers to projection, and cheers to hope.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Caleb won them all over: professors, students, grads. Essek bustled in from the back door, blearily balancing a coffee and sluggishly jumping into a back seat. He sank into the chair, looked up, and felt doused awake in the split second of Caleb’s gaze. Caleb straightened up, stammered for a second, took a breath, and continued into the next sentence with renewed energy. The storytelling, combined with the logical framework of Essek’s business perspective, carried his argument from hypothesis to fruition, and whoever wasn’t convinced soon fell under the spell of Caleb's enthusiasm. After Essek caught up with the lecture, embravened by the building ping-pong energy between the questioning audience and answering Caleb, raised his own hand and asked something naive upon which Caleb’s intelligent and thoughtful answer elevated his academic impressiveness. It was a bit beautiful to watch, someone so carried by their own knowledge and care.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Caleb took Essek to the Bulldog Tavern afterwards for a celebratory drink. It felt like their original bar, if covered in the desperate sheen of communal academia. Although new and unfamiliar, Caleb’s comfort drew Essek into the worn booth. They clinked their glasses, Essek congratulated Caleb on the job well done, Caleb thanked Essek for his help, and the day’s furious pace slowed down to a relaxing hum. He’s never been able to relax around someone like he has around Caleb.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At least until Caleb asked, “Why consulting, when you could be doing this?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Essek prepared his spine. “Oh you know, the skill set carries over, really. The private sector is reality, not just abstract reality but the reality, that we live in, and it’s pretty great to see the results of my work. It’s a constant challenge, working with smart people.” He couldn’t stop. “Honestly, aren’t P&amp;L’s just the dynamics of the economy?”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked at him a beat longer than necessary.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s ok, Essek, we can change the subject,” he smiled over the beer. Essek looked down at his red and wondered why he didn’t order it more often. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His thoughts wandered back to his lonely apartment, recommendation letter emails awaited their professor responses. GRE results already sent to his chosen institutions. A wedding invitation from the clustered family in Cambridge that always asked him what he was doing in the swamp. Come up north, come back.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It was my choice.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You still have one.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, this is my life, I committed to it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Another beat. “If you like. It’s your choice, you’re the one making it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Just as Essek opened his mouth, Caleb’s phone rang, and he took it while looking at Essek again, all too intently. He stared across the tavern, threw a couple “ja”’s to the caller, and ended it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Beau called. Jester is baking something huge.” He stared at his phone.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The party continues.” Essek gulped down the rest of his drink.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Would you like to come?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>How could he say no?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They ended up buying some wine past the District country line before relishing in Jester's banquet of celebratory sweets. They removed the sour aftertaste of wine. Essek basked in the antics of those around him, acute sweetness, pure delight, and chaotic compatibility. Caleb stood, surrounded by his grouphome’s cheer and chaos, and Essek leaned against the doorframe, spooning some tiramisu. Those questions should’ve pinched at his bruises, but he thought of Caleb’s probing gaze, and he found he didn’t mind them anymore. He could stare at Caleb for a long, long time.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>———————————————</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>One week, after postponing over and over under a deluge of work, Essek joined Caleb at his lab. Ramen cups on the counter, some impossible data to collect and then wrangle into something practical, Caleb whizzing around, and Essek trying to work and losing his focus. He had to both rerun and reformat a report, which… didn’t matter. And then it was done, and other than Caleb, there wasn’t much to focus on other than performance maintenance. He put on some earbuds, opened up an episode of Succession, just to have something to talk about at work tomorrow, and then realized that he didn’t want to watch it. Caleb walked past, putting his hair into a higher ponytail, intent on his own thought. Essek tried to watch Shiv’s next ploy, but his eyes kept on returning to Caleb, sitting at the laboratory computer and fiddling with his pen. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re nice, these laboratory sessions, being with Caleb. Those few times that an exasperated Caleb ran into a dead end and described his hypothesis and discrepant results, Essek asked the right questions to connect the stars into a constellation. They were naive questions, he did stop his train of study in this field, but the instinct and intuition was there, and while Caleb could have any other grad student in the laboratory with him, instead, there sat Essek. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They dropped into companionable silence. Back to individual work. Together, Caleb at the whiteboard, sleeves rolled up and making progress, Essek with his laptop, just happy to be around. Nice, it’s disorientingly nice; imagine actually liking being with a person.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ordinarily, Essek wanted to escape every room that he was in, and that force of habit ironed his spine to firm against every instinct to run away. His current calmed back lay relaxed. He had left those theatrical and pressurized work happy hours not because he was darting away from sociability, but because he wanted to spend that blissful quiet time with Caleb. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In May, it rained.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The warming humidity of the swamp collected condensation on the windows, and the gathering stillness lay a thin film over the fluorescent laboratory.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Caleb plopped down next to Essek, blowing his hair from his face in exhaustion. He sat close, a warm body in cold humidity. The silence of the empty building echoed around them, now that Caleb stopped thinking and Essek stopped typing. It was late; they were alone. The lights in this section of the building were automatic, and if not Caleb dashing around the lab in previous hours, they would be in cold humid darkness. Essek’s shirt stuck to his skin, he’d been here so long, with wrinkles pressed into the creases around his wrists. He continued typing his admissions personal essay when Caleb leaned his head against his shoulder.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Essek froze. Caleb made a little, sleepy noise, like his cat, breathing out across Essek’s shirt collar. He felt warm, like a heated blanket lay just over his shoulder.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Essek blinked and forced his unfocused eyes to look at the Wharton admission application; he felt whatever he had inside him shrivel further.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t thinking about stars, not about their representations of curves on graphs, with their endlessly dynamic and infinite loops, not about how grounded he feels, heart heating with heat under Caleb’s head on his shoulder, not about the loose hair inching out of Caleb’s ponytail and curving inside his shirt collar, like it wanted to get closer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He left Boston to be a bit warmer, and under these fluorescent lights and Caleb’s presence, he thought he could feel the pinpricks of heat begin to melt him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The machine beeped and Caleb jostled awake. He blinked, visibly not fully aware, and groaned as he pressed the heel of his palms to his eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Urghhh, it’s late, I can’t keep doing this,” he breathed out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Essek slammed the laptop closed. “It is.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Caleb kept sitting next to him, not moving, eyes looking far away.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you plan to bike home like this?” Essek asked.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked at him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s raining, it’s late, and the metro is down.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This is what friends do.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You can come home with me, I’ve got a place for you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Caleb stood up and went to the machine, blinking at the new findings.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“DuPont is closer than Arlington, I’ll order an Uber, and you can leave your bike here for the night.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Essek packed up his laptop, and Caleb continued clicking at the machine with a furrowed brow.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  &lt;“I can’t let you bike home like this.”
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If you insist.” Caleb looked away from the screen in bleary, bemused resignation. “I can’t tell what it’s trying to tell me anyways.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Across town, Essek’s place lay dark, colorless and sparse, a functional rather than living space. He gestured towards the dark couch when he entered: “I’ll get you a toothbrush and a towel, right?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Caleb entered in after him and immediately dropped his messenger bag and dropped onto the couch.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“This is already great, I don’t need anything else,” he murmured into his sweater’s sleeve.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Essek glanced back from where he was picking out a pillow and a blanket from a closet and felt a pressure in his chest. He returned with a blanket, throwing it over Caleb and hoping it would cover all of him, and tried to coax the pillow under his chaotic hair. Caleb raised and dropped his head onto its softness, arm moving from out under the blanket to grab hold of it, and nearly getting Essek’s cautious arm. Essek darted out of the way, silent and tense, still watching for Caleb’s comfort. Eyes closed, he smiled in his bleary tiredness, whispered a small “danke, and good night,” and, breathing out, sank into sleep. Essek’s tense heart did a flip, and terror followed. WHAT was happening to him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>————————————</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The next morning, after both of them fizzed through their mornings back to employment and responsibility, Essek received a text from Caleb.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I’ve finally seen your place — while I previously just wondered, now I know: you need some more chaos in your life, Veth is organizing a game night and there might be fireworks? I’m helping with the pyrotechnics, come over around 7.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Evening plans set, and something bright to look forward to after the grind, Essek worked against the daylight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At the group house, something bright and loud was fizzing in the backyard. A chorus of delighted yelling accompanied it, and Essek let himself in from the front to join the party, like a raven in a parrot flock. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Whatever they had sent off before, it fizzled out, and Veth (with a crossbow?) and Jester were choosing the next domestic explosion while Caleb stood next to them, rhythmically turning the lighter on and off in patience. When he saw Essek, he waved.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ok so— for the next one—- you can throw it, and Caleb can light my crossbow bolt, and then I’ll shoot it — and BOOM! Best explosion!” Veth gestured her excitement with hands everywhere, and Jester nodded furiously and searched through the pile of explosives.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ok ok ok ok ok — I need to find the right one though, here, Essek, you choose a quick one while I get the Most Perfect one, ok?” Jester gesticulated over the pile.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Red Dragon, Amethyst Explosion, Pirate Party — the names flew up until he saw a warm orange Roman candle, and handed it to Caleb. He walked over to light it on the patch of sweet grass, flicking the lighter on and off, and Essek walked back towards the house; they might be used to explosions, but he had yet to see how bad this could go.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As the soft pshhhhhh of the Roman candle lit, Caleb’s face brightened with an earnest smile, eyebrows up, eyes wide and taking in the light. He jogged back as the small stream of sparks grew into a proper upwards cascade, illuminating the whole backyard in an insistent fountain made of pinpricks of light. Caleb stood beside Jester and Veth, who were still looking for the next one. Oh, he was beautiful, eyes bright, hair on fire, stubble reflecting the sparks already within him. Caleb stared at the Roman candle enraptured, shoulders soft and smooth curved into a gentle smile. His eyes moved from the spew, through its loudness, and to Essek standing safely behind. His softness and awe remained, settling over Essek, and he felt his own insides alight.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Straight to explosions, like the worst teenagers.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Beauregard’s voice jostled him from his reverie as she sidled up and handed him a beer.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah.” Essek blinked as he looked away from the candle, then to Beauregard, then back to Caleb, who gathered the dying candle and returned to Jester and Veth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I mean, we could’ve waited, but dammit, I wanted to see them lit too.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You got them?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Totally. Nothing beats a New Jersey fireworks fest.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Essek stilled in his comfort, yet Beauregard’s sharp gaze bore into him from the side.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Look, I’ve seen this face before,” she growled, “You want him to raw you, ok buddy — fuck off, actually. He’s like my brother, and he’s been through a lot, and he definitely doesn’t need this right now.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ice, all down his back. He forced the words through his teeth. “I do not want to fuck Caleb.” His gaze bored at her, and he knew they were standing still, but this nauseating feeling of falling must be what people called vertigo, and vertigo was new, vertigo was unmooring, and what he would give to finally land.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She clinked her bottle with his still one. “Keep it that way.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The bright lights of the fireworks were out, and Essek shivered in the familiar cold of their absence. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Please know that 1) I love Beauregard with my whole heart and 2) she’s not wrong and 3) I wish I could do her role in this story more justice. </p><p>Again, huge thanks to Saffron &amp; Catherine — you help make my thoughts make sense, and to Pickle, who riffed this fic with me into existence. </p><p>May we all get the life and the love we ache for.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>fic title from ‘when i fall’ by the barenaked ladies.<br/>huge thank you to saffron &amp; catherine. you’re, frankly, the best.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Essek came home to Caleb’s blanket and pillow folded on the couch (a conscientious guest, of course they’re his items now). In the cold shivering room, the brightness of the fireworks felt muddled and faded. He dove into the blanket, wrapping it around himself in the faint hope for any warm embrace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dreamed of warmth, of breathing the air of someone else, they were so close. Arms wrapping around him, safe and protective that his skin breathed in relief. Of connection, of expanding beyond the boundaries of his body and mind, of smug satisfaction.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He woke up hard, woke up ashamed. He proceeded to do what he did best: function. He went to work; his hands moved and the machinery in his brain ground its insights, but his eyes felt covered with a thin filter of non-reality. If anyone asked what he did that day, he couldn’t have said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He crawled home after work, collapsing again onto Caleb’s couch, and just as he was about to close his eyes, his phone rang with that particular tone of family alarm. Leaded and heavy, he raised the phone with his mother’s ringing name. Accepting the call felt like jumping into the metro tracks. His heart sank further behind his ribs, away from the incoming onslaught.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaw tight, neck locked in faux confident defense, he dutifully listened, like a proper son, to his mother’s siege of a conversation (and he remembered, and quickly threw away the memory of the comfortable dancing thoughts with Caleb). Sybil’s vow renewal required attendance back in Cambridge; it would be a travesty not to attend, to forgo his place in the chess game he was trained in. With a hiss, the painful expectations of the queen onto the pawn doused any remnant of the spark of humanity, of chaotic joy from the recent fireworks. Fine, he thought. I’m good at this, I can do this. I’ll be who you want me to be. He booked the train to Boston.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next day, the film across his perception of the world thickened and muffled sound, touch, focus. In his numbness, his glossed over eyes had to redo everything at work, staying late in shame, and falling asleep on the couch that will now forever be Caleb’s. His phone pinged with a text from Caleb, and he placed it face down on the floor. He sank into a sleep, and dreamed of him kissing all over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek’s haze kept him in a spiral of the same questions. Without that human spark of connection, he realized how much of his life was this slog of ambitious professionalism -- and for what? He remembered Caleb’s shuttered gaze, like he wanted to say something, at the tavern. He remembered his own fruitless justification and pinprick of doubt. In his disenchantment and unmooring, he arrived to work late, or rather, on time. He stood behind his cubemates in the elevator and saw their previously performative small talk as these little sparks burst of potential, of relationship maintenance, of earnest emotion supplementing necessary functioning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On that first call, as everyone in the conference room took vigorous notes and telegraphed their loud active listening, his shifted mind estranged him from the moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking at his coworkers: What is this, actually?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Looking at his own notebook: What am I doing?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His shiny cuffs glinted in menacingly. Where did he find the energy to perform? To pretend to care? To jump through these arbitrary hoops? The weight of the day fell on him. He was tired, and never realized how much he worked just to maintain the illustrious illusion of idyllic productivity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stepped outside the conference room just to see a group of government suits dulling the shine of their private sector lobby. The last one, Beauregard, met his eyes with a steel poker face and he shivered. They walked into an adjacent department and he sighed with relief that he left that client project before it started collapsing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wanted to hang his head from the weight, to lay his head on someone’s shoulder, to fall and know that someone would catch him. He stood on the precipice, furiously tense, knowing he could over the edge at any moment. Caleb texted him, asking about lunch; Essek didn’t respond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next night, he dreamt of that mouth, pinch tight in a sly, self-assured smile, taking a sip from his usual beer. He said some things in that sandpaper tone, Essek didn’t recognize the words, they were so close, again that breath, his weight slumped into their rumbling vibration. From rigidity to a moving, flexible spine. Again, that warmth, that satisfied ache in his heart, feeling covered and consumed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every morning he woke up, that spark cracked his constructed, no-longer-reliable ice. Every morning, his sudden transition from primitive emotion to constructed consciousness froze back up. He was embarrassed, with this persistent reaction. He walked by an air conditioning vent at work and felt goosebumps outside and inside, barely suppressing how existentially cold he felt, and how many cracks still crept, hairline-thin, patiently, through his armor.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone tapped their fingers on a desk and he thought of Caleb’s elegant ones drawing a figure on a whiteboard.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked at a model he built to predict this quarter’s growth, and his chest grew hot with frustration at how limited it was in its scope of understanding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In a meeting, someone asked, “Thelyss, anyone home?” And Essek knew the answer to that was no.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His reputation, focus, and mind crept away from him, and without them, what did he have — who was he if not this — what was he trying to accomplish here anyways, if this is all he had —-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He went home and drank a bottle of wine and passed out on the refuge of Caleb’s couch. The blanket still offered some safety in its warmth. Essen melted into it, exhausted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He woke up in darkness to an aggressively blue lit phone. Squinting against the pressure behind his eyes, he saw Caleb’s insistent and concerned messages. He wrote something; he was sure it stopped him. He turned the phone over and dove back into the blanket, hoping that the feeling of nauseating vertigo will dissipate in grounded warmth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the dark silence, a knock rapped at his door. Essek ignored it. He heard a sigh, the sound of someone shuffling farther away, and then the most ear-piercing meow. Widogast’s cat was alive; he could open the door and know it as a fact. Widogast’s cat was alive, and so was he, and he might as well fall from the precipice he’d been on for so long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek opened the door, embraced by the blanket and bracing against the bright hall. Lit by the overhead lights, Caleb glowed. He carried a judgemental cat with a self-satisfied turn of the muzzle and a bakery box. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His mouth fell into a grim line. “Are you.... how are you?” Without waiting, he walked past Essek’s blanketed form into the apartment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Essek from before the fireworks would’ve done something about this. Essek at that moment could barely pretend. “I’m fine, I am fine.” Caleb looked at him from the kitchen counter. “I am <em>fine</em>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb’s brow followed the disbelieving line of his mouth. “Mhm.” Frumpkin jumped on top of the counter and snipped around the wine bottle (last night’s?) standing on it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Please—- I’m. Fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked down at Frumpkin and threw away the bottle. He waved Essek over, gave him a wet paper towel, pointed at the spilled wine and who knows what else on the granite, and fixed him with a pleading look.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb guided and Essek moved out of his frozen state, doing anything, as Caleb concocted a soft soup from whatever staples he found in the fridge. Essek moved as possessed, too tired to perform, too tired to resist what he knew was good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He fell back onto the couch, vertigo and hangover, and Caleb sat next to him with two steaming bowls of soup. Essek held its heavy, breaking weight, the prickling heat spreading in his rigid hands, and the line holding him up snapped. He placed it on the coffee table and collapsed on Caleb, on that living solidity. He was so nice to hold on to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb put his bowl down and wrapped his arm around him, simply taking him in. Essek suddenly felt the facsimile of the blanket — nothing compares to the understanding and acceptance of another person making room for you in comfort. No judgements, no qualifiers, just Caleb holding him. When was the last time Essek was held? He couldn’t remember. So he nuzzled further into Caleb’s sweater, and basked in the smell of warmth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt a breath on his ear as Caleb kissed his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek spine locked, and Caleb froze above him. Essek forced himself to breathe, to lay his full weight back on Caleb’s side, eyes wide and body trying to pretend. Caleb’s arm fell back in its full weight, tentative. The hitch in his breath resumed with hesitation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Suddenly, the vertigo became clear. Against the precipice, Essek gazed into its unknown depths, the churning possibility and potential, the experiences expanding beyond his bones’ frozen fear. He tensed his armor against this vulnerability for so long, raged against this dark possibility — of truth, and trust, and their magnitudes’ acceptance — and ached in his exhaustion. Stepping off the precipice, he allowed himself to feel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked up at Caleb. A wonderful blush warmed his nose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah, if that was, -er, forward, or - you didn’t - or—-“</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Goodbye to performance, Essek was always a scientist at heart. He stated his fact. “I liked it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb eased, smiled, “Oh, good. Me too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek’s whole body felt different, like whatever dynamic molecules rebelling against their own nature have finally forsaken their false regiment and activated their true light and motion. Essek had been cold all his life. If he could bury more into Caleb, he would.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb raised a trembling hand, leaning forward and he was going to touch Essek, and those elegant fingers broke the ice on his check—-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Essek leaned in, he couldn’t help it, succumbing to this newfound gravity, this must be some newfound universal force, this newest discovery—- </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb kissed him, so close, so warm, and Essek knew he’d never been alive until this moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was elevating, like catching a warm draft of air and was taking off. Caleb leaned away, resting his hand on the back of Essek’s neck. His gaze raised Essek’s breath, and he felt light and ascending under the weight of belonging. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No wonder people look towards the sky, he thought. We have nothing to fear when we fall.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>cheers to feeling. I’d love to know what you felt.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Huge thanks to Saffron, Catherine, and Pickle, who saw the potential of this messy, messy draft. This story wouldn’t have made any sense without your help. Thank you for being with me during this journey. </p><p>And to you, dear reader, the last chapter — enjoy!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No matter how long you fly, you must land.</p><p>After a gorgeous, languid summer of kisses pressed under fluorescent lights, strolls along the swampy Potomac, and bubbly laughter in the Nein’s backyard, Essek light heart landed when his gaze fell on that train ticket. The heavy weight of familial commitment dispersed his joy — at least, until Caleb volunteered to lighten it by coming with him. </p><p>Essek prepared him properly, drilling flash cards on the couch where Caleb previously held him.</p><p>“And, Thuron?”</p><p>“Currently out of the country.”</p><p>“Where?”</p><p>“... Somewhere…. West…?”</p><p>Essek glanced up at Caleb, who looked back in an imploring gaze. He put down the cards.</p><p>“Please understand, you want to come with, but it’ll be miserable if you’re not prepared.”</p><p>Caleb leaned in. “What makes you think that I’m not ready already? I know how to get around the inhabitants of a certain distinction.”</p><p>Essek stared back. “It’s more than habit. You, as part of me, need to be up to the level of scrutiny. There will be scrutiny.” God, will there be scrutiny.</p><p>“Then what’s wrong? That I don’t know the people that I’ve never met?”</p><p>Essek slumped in defeat. Caleb meant well and made sense.</p><p>“Well, most of them are allergic. To cats.”</p><p>“No worries, Jester knows how to look after animals, we’ll leave Frumpkin with her.”</p><p>“Your clothes. We need to consider your wardrobe.”</p><p>“Is it that I don’t wear expensive, uncomfortable sweaters? I could if you wanted.”</p><p>Essek managed a weak smile and a weaker chuckle. “They’re … awful…”</p><p>“You should try one of mine, like the one with the patches on the elbows?” The thought of wearing Caleb’s clothes nearly kills him on the spot. Covered in Caleb, comfort over optics. “Frumpkin can manage a few days without us.”</p><p>“He’s a good cat.”</p><p>“He’s the best cat. And he’ll wait for us to return.”</p><p>That weekend, Caleb left Frumpkin at the Mighty Nein group house. Jester held him in her arms as a concerned Fjord walked by and mouthed an “are you sure?” at Caleb. He mimed a finger across his throat, eyes and tongue out, and walked away. Beauregard sidled up to Jester and Frumpkin licked the fingers she brought up to him. </p><p>“Good luck with family,” she said, looking at Frumpkin.</p><p>“Thank you — I feel prepared,” Caleb responded.</p><p>Jester stepped forward and kissed each of them on the cheek, for good luck, she said. Behind her, Beauregard looked at Essek, and he nodded back. </p><p>The teasing chill of the DMV autumn plunged into ice as their train richoteed to Boston. Colder and colder, Essek stepped out onto the platform on the North End and kept walking along that familiar path, head down against the wind, black peacoat collar turned up, inertia carrying him forth. Steps came up closer behind him, until Caleb caught up in his brown coziness, eyes barely visible above his large blue scarf, and scooped his arm in his. They walked together, the two of them more formidable against the cold, inertia working its magic on the cobblestone streets of Boston.</p><p>They kept to themselves before the dinner, Essek showing the empty family manor in Cambridge. They dropped their bags in the library, collected over centuries. Caleb, probably sweating in the New England interior heat under his heavy coat, ran his fingers over the oldest of tomes, finding them immaculate and immediately. He took a book  — definitely some disproven astronomical text from the Colonial period — and had enough self-awareness to at least glance up at the family portrait staring down at him, the most recent one amongst the other slowly fading representations of their clan over the years. It hung above the fireplace, where it was usually ominously lit by the orange glow, but today its flat representation of the family with their father flattened further under the weak, monochrome winter light.</p><p>Essek checked his work phone; an organizational update concerning that client that would otherwise have dragged them to endless investigation. He felt a bit of relief, again and again, for jumping from that project as soon he could. </p><p>They spent the day wandering around MIT, relishing the light under that beautiful rotunda, failing to find errors in student research projects hanging in the cold halls. Caleb kept him close, squeezing his hand every once in a while, looking back with barely veiled concern. The yellowed trees near the Charles River delighted in their blitz of fire amongst a dreary city already slick with a layer of ice. Autumnal gloom at its best. Essek tried not to think of HBS, just upstream.</p><p>Caleb pulled him farther in, the warmth of his arm enveloping. </p><p>“Hallowed halls and expectations. How did, you, back then, survive?” He murmured.</p><p>“I did just enough,” Essek breathed, voice solid and understated. “By doing just enough that they couldn’t say anything back. First Williams. Not an Ivy, but close enough in reputation and far enough way that I fell out of the immediate orbit of influence. Consulting is adjacent to investment banking. The current fad of prestigious college grads. They couldn’t argue, even if I wasn’t doing exactly everything by plan. DC is still reputable, even though it’s not.” He looked around, “Boston.”</p><p>Caleb also looked up. “Must be quite a jump.”</p><p>Essek looked down.. “Not as much as a continent, but…. They keep pulling me back in.”</p><p>They fell into the center of the web during the main theatrical event of the family dinner. Essek rarely had an opportunity to see Caleb dressed up to impress: his hair braided back, a pressed suit that Essek had never seen before, proper gleaming cuff links. Essek paused his own buttoning to brush imaginary cat hair from Caleb’s chest and shoulders, just to have an excuse to enjoy him closely, like this, alone. Caleb kissed him on the nose with a knowing smile. Essek melted into the affection, trying to hold onto this sense of who he is around Caleb, this caring, daring side — who he has learned to be these past few months, while putting on the guise of who he thought he needed to be.</p><p>At the dinner, the familiar faces mixed in with the soon-to-be-familiar. Some aunts barely veiled their disappointment in Caleb’s yet unfinished dissertation, who politely cut the meat of his fascinating abstract into a logline. Verin floated near the edge of his vision, shifting congeniality in a crowd. His false bravado and crew arms barely held that moralistic goodness underneath. </p><p>Behind him, Dietra glaciated in Essek’s direction: white silk, the image of controlled, viper-like power and poise. She reached out her hands and Essek helplessly puppeted towards her hug behind a champagne glass. She whispered into his ear:</p><p>“Your plus one?”</p><p>“Caleb, yes.”</p><p>Her eyes darted from Essek to Caleb, who was yielding to the ignorant mercylessness of the aunts.</p><p>“What does he do?”</p><p>“An astrophysicist.”</p><p>“Where did you meet.”</p><p>“At Bible study.”</p><p>“And you live together?”</p><p>“Of course not.”</p><p>She released her locked gaze from him and looked down at what she had hugged. Her nose pricked. He was wearing Caleb’s burgundy tie.</p><p>“The lavender one I gave last Christmas… You could wear it tomorrow.”</p><p>“I’ll see if I brought it.”</p><p>She pressed her lips together in the shape of a smile and left to give a half-hug to Verin, to serenade further guests. Caleb appeared at his elbow. </p><p>“Your aunts interrogate like sharks,” he huffed, straightening out his own tie.</p><p>Essek took a sip in silence. Caleb placed a hand on his back and leaned in.</p><p>“Your spine is straight.”</p><p>Essek felt his warmth, his scent more pleasant and grounding than the familiarity around him. He made himself roll his shoulders, unlock his jaw, blink the champagne bubbles away. In his gaze, Dietra returned to the kitchens, barely holding in her displeasure at some appetizer slight inconspicuous to everyone else.</p><p>“Habit,” he whispered.</p><p>“What else is planned this evening?” Caleb asked.</p><p>“Dinner will be worth sticking around for.”</p><p>Caleb nodded. “And after?”</p><p>“More… show-ponying,” he finally looked away from the crowd and to Caleb. “You’ll probably be seated next to Carmela on your other side. She’s the one -“</p><p>“Who just finished her dissertation.”</p><p>“Nicely done. They probably hope that you’ll have something to talk about.”</p><p>“Thank you, I pride myself on my memory. I hope hers is done, for her sake.” He turned to face Essek directly, gaze directly orthogonal to his joking tone. “We can leave whenever we want.”</p><p>Essek looked back and wondered if a gaze can showcase that he did, that you, Caleb, you could, you can, I can’t — and just nodded. Coming back always tied him in spiderwebs of lies.</p><p>The actual dinner delivered on its grand expectations. Servants laid plates with too little, too gorgeous, still clogging stomachs with wine. Essek sat between Verin, winning arms and smile, and Caleb, polite stance and gaze. </p><p>Over a couple beautifully rendered scraps of kale, apple, and feta, Verin’s lacrosse optimism grated and also didn’t. </p><p>“How are applications going?” He asked between forkfuls.</p><p>“Finally submitted. Now I’m waiting for responses.”</p><p>“Wow, already! Any chances you’ll be, maybe, somewhere closer? I mean, you toured HBS this visit, right? Imagining how it’ll be, hah? Campus is gorgeous this time of year.”</p><p>“That is one of the schools I applied to, yes.”</p><p>“A bit more orange, a bit more Robert Frost, than the good ol’ swamp, hah?”</p><p>“A lot more.”</p><p>Essek bit his cheek. He knew he could do better. He ran full seances with Caduceus. He unloaded so many familial bruises onto Veth. He gleefully gossiped with Jester. Yet their previous brotherly cadence wrapped them both up like puppet strings, and they wiggled under the pull like they did their whole childhoods.</p><p>Essek fit in because he hated all of this expectant posturing, yet he was so good at the bladed dance between them all, he slotted himself into the emotional machinery of this family with cutthroat ease. Verin played his part well, the dumb jock with a bright smile that puts everyone else at ease, but behind those dimples, Essek saw for the first time this inner desperation for… emotional vulnerability? Friendship? It felt so much more real and so out of place in this place. He was suddenly reminded of Jester, of that sad pout she oozed when he snubbed her questions. He felt, just like with her, the need to fix that face.</p><p>The budding seed of comfort rising through Essek throat withered in acid once Verin began about the situation with Bain.</p><p>“But seriously, the Feds! On your project! With no actual criminality found! It’s ridiculous, I mean, talk about government overreach.”</p><p>Essek remembered Beau striding from the elevator with a stance of purpose.</p><p>“Bain, fortunately no, but Cerberus was attempting various high-level schemes to avoid accountability, as well as demanding our own complicity on it, so I wouldn’t say that nothing was found. The fact that their plans were leaked and they had fallen under their own sword wasn’t horrible at all.”</p><p>Caleb tensed near him.</p><p>“Maybe they shouldn’t have gotten caught —“ Verin continued.</p><p>Beau’s clear, owl gaze.</p><p>“Maybe they should have. Maybe we all need a good look at whatever we’re doing.” Essek snapped.</p><p>He felt a hand on his elbow. Caleb was trying to be discreet, looking down at his plate, his fiery alertness present in his stance, but that made him realize how loud he had been.</p><p>Dietra looked down at him from the head of the table. He tried to straighten his shoulders, not from habit of judgement but from strength of stance. Who he has learned to be was someone who met the gaze with opportunity, not with knives. He responded with his own owl gaze.</p><p>“When was the last time you had been to confession, Essek?”</p><p>No use in wasting the learned skill of a liar. “I’ll go soon.” </p><p>“See to it. No one can get a better look at what you are doing than there.” </p><p>Caleb squeezed his elbow further, waiting until everyone else had returned to their conversations before coming close to Essek, radiating heat and concern.</p><p>“I’m fine,” Essek whispered before Caleb had a chance to say anything. Caleb closed his mouth. “Sometimes they need to be reminded that intentions matter beyond optics.”</p><p>Caleb leaned back, set to smoulder. Essek finally felt what he wanted to say.</p><p>“Sometimes I need to remind myself. It took me too long to realize, well, you, because of,” he lowered his voice even further, “all of this.”</p><p>Essek grabbed his hand, screw everyone, and held it with solidity and commitment, the best, real apology he could give at the moment. Caleb saw something that lowered his defenses; he smiled back, he squeezed back, and he sat back, posture as if he was at his lab laptop than a dinner worth his semester’s pay.</p><p>Essek turned back to Verin. He made the conscious choice to say what was on his mind. He felt his habits return, felt himself decidedly act against them. </p><p>“It may have been a bad show on the company, but I think it’s fine to go through an investigation like that and come out clean. It’s good to own up to mistakes,” he lowered his voice, glancing at Dietra, wrapped in her own plastered smile, visibly not listening to the conversation happening at her, “And to actually own up to them.”</p><p>Verin looked at him with a puzzled look, like Essek gifted him a blazing star, before the weight of realization came onto him, and he nodded in understanding.</p><p>Essek leaned away from learned ice and into the innate warmth that his brother had already offered him.</p><p>“I think I saw your team win the latest semifinal?”</p><p>Verin volleyed back with a story of their most recent triumph, a rare real smile on his face, that his pitch was finally thrown back. </p><p>With Caleb’s warmth and Verin’s smile, he felt that resolve to do it. To commit against what was learned, this venom and ice, to be different. To melt, to calm, to thaw. To resist against falling back into line. To embrace that sincerity that he had all along. With the Nein, teaching him to unfurl those spikes; with Caleb, who caught him when he fell; with Verin, who glowed with reciprocated, unyielding connection.</p><p>He and Caleb left soon after desert, hugging Verin and ignoring the aunts and cousins. They walked around Harvard Square arm in arm, like they did along the sweltering summer months on the buzzing Potomac. </p><p>“Thoughts?” Essek asked.</p><p>Caleb chortled at that, his breath bright against the needling air. “I’m glad I was there. Your mother wanted to eat me like a radish, for being close to you. And your brother…”</p><p>“If you had met him first…” Essek was still new at jokes.</p><p>Caleb smiled further. “No, but thank you for the nonexistent vote of confidence.”</p><p>He kept walking and Essek could see the equations crunching in his beautiful brain. He began, eyebrows drawn in focus.</p><p>“Meeting you was like looking at a box. You don’t know the accurate status of Schroedinger’s cat, no one knows, but I felt like it was there.”</p><p>“That cat didn’t know that it wanted to live, that it wanted to love.” Essek pressed himself closer to Caleb.</p><p>“All it took was to open the box.”</p><p>Essek ground his face further into Caleb’s coat.</p><p>“The patterns I have seen — there is curiosity powered by malice, intent to kill the cat, even if it is alive— ” Essek thought of viper-eyes. “— And there is curiosity powered by love, that wants to see something alive.” He looked down at Essek. “And love, powered by curiosity.”</p><p>Essek turned to Caleb. He didn’t have words for this. He took Caleb’s cold face into his hands, running his thumb over that cutting cheekbone. </p><p>“Thank you.” He kissed him, trying to convey what he couldn’t with words. He understood, he knew, he wanted Caleb to know, he wanted Caleb to know he knew. He moved slow and intent, holding Caleb close and hoping they could capture this moment, these hearts committed to living with truth, these two cats released from disparate boxes, both alive.</p><p>Snow feathered around them, enveloping in the memory of a cold goodbye at a bar. It bit their faces not yet warmed by their kissed breath, and they stood, wrapped in each other, warm and content; Essek swore he could hear Caleb’s heart through his layers. They held onto each other, caught each other, and kept wandering into the dark, continuing their endless conversation. Essek knew cold, he knew what it was like to have the self frozen over and then thawed; now he knew, he could be different</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I’ve never been struck with an idea like this before — this is the longest fiction work I’ve written past childhood. I’ve learned a lot over my time writing this, mostly on how writing is really hard!! That characters do what they want on the page, and that comments make a writer’s day! I’m glad I cut my teeth with something as self-indulgent as this; I hope you have enjoyed it in the meantime, dear reader. </p><p>Above all else, take care of yourself and your loved ones, dear reader. I hope you can hold onto your own sense of self, love the people who help bring you out of your own shell, who remind you that life is meant to be lived in full pleasure, comfort, and love. I hope you have someone to hold onto, who makes you feel warm, even under a slowly encroaching blanket of snow.</p><p>Many thanks for sticking with me here. Cheers to your own ambitious, creative, self-indulgent endeavors!</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This idea grasped onto me and didn’t let go - the first time I ever felt the need to actually write a proper narrative. Am I projecting a lot? Sure. But that’s what fanfic is for, and I’m here to be indulgent.<br/>Huge thank you to @iniquiticity on tumblr for tiffing with me on this!!<br/>Written starting Shadowgast week 2020: Modern AU<br/>Now with art: https://twitter.com/caltracat/status/1259836324405743621?s=21</p></blockquote></div></div>
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